No, It is not my intention to offend any cricket lover. And please do not bring in Nationalities here as cricket is too beautiful a game to be dragged down with nationalism. Leave nationalism for baseball and its patrons

Ok , so to come back to cricket. Sir Don's greatest achievement was he batted without much protective gear, even agianst the hostile pace of Larwood

And the hostillity of Larwood that was so unique to bodyline was the norm in 70's and 80's with the bowling quartet of West Indians. Basically 4 Larwoods in one team on even deadlier pitches like those of Barbados and Antigua.

Hence its difficult to crown Sir Don as the greates of all time. The greates of his times, indeed

@Hindukafir
In one swift move you have offended all English and Australian cricket suppoters.
This was a time when England was the pre-eminent force in world cricket. Bradman forced the then best cricket team in the world to adopt a method of bowling specfcally designed to limit is uncanny ability to score. The Laws of Cricket were eventually changed to ensure the debacle, which was the Bodyline series, to never be repeated.

"Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest of all batters and batsmen"
The Economist, I thank you.

For those who do not know of "The Don" Wisden hailed Bradman as, "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games". Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations (SD) that they stand above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are:

When Bradman died, Time magazine allocated a space in its "Milestones" column for an obituary:

... Australian icon considered by many to be the pre-eminent sportsman of all time ... One of Australia's most beloved heroes, he was revered abroad as well. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, his first question to an Australian visitor was, "Is Sir Donald Bradman still alive?"

As an American who grew up playing baseball his whole life, I have to admit I scoffed at cricket. How impressive is it if the bowler gets a running start and relies on the bounce to get the ball to change direction? Surely that has nothing on a swooping curve or a deadly splitter. But during my graduate studies at Oxford, despite my goal to be a baseball apologist, I started playing cricket and fell in love with it. We were only playing Twenty20, but it was the perfect way to start an evening.

The author of the article is correct. The skills translated immediately. I was a novice, to be sure, but managed 27 runs in five overs in my first attempt. Can't wait to play again.

Being of late engaged in argument with those in Canada who worry that baseball may one day be eclipsed by cricket because of this country's growing South Asian and Caribbean communities, the timing of this article, or for that matter, the exhibition it reviews, is especially gratifying.

Some see Canada sharing in the "North American" tradition of baseball but I doubt such an inclusive interpretation of the sport exists in the US. Equally, Canadians have no true share in the tradition of cricket either.

Canada’s role at the dawn of international cricket was preceded by 160 years of decline and the rapid spread of baseball in country, especially after the First World War. But clearly cricket has only been hibernating and is now showing a promising re-awakening as new citizens from Commonwealth countries help reintroduce.

Cricket is unavoidable linked to Canada and its future. Baseball, in turn, won’t disappear anytime soon so we are left holding both sports dear. But in terms of available athletics infrastructure, I wouldn’t mind seeing any underused baseball diamonds rounded, their fences and cages knocked down and their infields re-sodded to accommodate a decent cricket pitch here and there across the land.

It will not only be Twenty20 that brings the two sports closer together again, as this article suggests. Canada, perhaps, has role to play also in its own precarious mid-wicket position between the Britain and the US in their different cultural positions.

Most comparisons between cricket and baseball come from people who follow or have played only one of the two, and who speak not only from ignorance, but from lack of the enthusiasm that comes from actually playing. They are games that are great fun for amateurs and career professionals alike, but unfortunately as spectator sports they both attract zealot statisticians who will tell you in heartless detail who was LBW in the third test in the Gentlemen v Players game at Lords in 1938, or who hit the first double play in the 1946 World Series. This explains why both are excruciatingly boring games for the novice fan -- as are most games. Consequently, discussions and comments degenerate into statements or inferences that one game is "better than" the other. Frequently, these cricket-baseball comparisons are trojan horses for the visceral xenophobia that often lurks below the official friendly relationships between Brits and American who are divided by the bond of having (roughly) the same language. As a (smug) Canadian, I have played both cricket and baseball, and I enjoy both, but where I live in Quebec, the game is hockey -- and don't bother to prefix the name with "ice".

Mort Mortensen now speaks for everyone. I'm an American and I care. The NFL is now the #1 American spectator sport: however, Baseball is still super popular in the United States, parts of Asia, and Latin America.